


Bonds & Tethers

by Legendaerie



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Asexual Spectrum, Canon-Typical Violence, Demisexuality, Expanded Backstory, F/M, Grey-Asexuality, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Sexual Assault, Past Sexual Assault, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-22 10:58:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4832876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you think I could ever fall in love with a human man?" </p><p>That was the easy question; if she hadn't already, they wouldn't be standing here, so close she can hear him swallow nervously and smell the hay-sweet scent of his skin. No, the hard one was the one she couldn't ask, much less answer. And it has nothing to do with the war.</p><p>---</p><p>An expansion of canon, and an exploration of how certain events could have impacted a female Tabris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I'm... still not emotionally over this game. Somewhat of a continuation of [in time, saves nine](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4748987) \- or is at least about the same Warden, because I'm still on my first playthrough and cherry-picking my way through alternate endgame paths. 
> 
> Comments are encouraged! I'd like to get to know this community more and stick around, if you'll have me. <3

It wasn't so bad, at first.

 

The first thing she'd done was buy chainmail armor - _blood money_ , sang the coins in her hand, _blood money you took from corpses_ \- and changed behind the nearest tree. The metal chafed and pinched against her skin, but she felt safe in them and that was important.  They were solid, comforting in their own way, and when Tabris followed three human men out of a camp filled with human men it wasn't as bad at it could have been. No one else seemed to notice her behavior, either; no one else knew what had happened back home in the Arl’s castle other than Duncan, and then--

 

And then he was gone, too, and no one else would listen to an elf.  Her secret, her weakness and her fear; no one else would know.

 

But there were still mornings when she'd wake up in a cold sweat, throat tense around a scream she refused to let out, and pull on a full suit of armor before even stepping out of her tent. There were still mornings when Alistair, sweet and foolish, would shoot her a pitying look. There were still mornings when the monsters in her dreams weren't Darkspawn but men, and it wasn't Shianna on the floor with all the fight beat out of her, but Tabris. There were still mornings where the monster was her, for being thankful it had been someone else.

 

And on those mornings, she'd lie through her teeth to her Warden companion and say that she was fine.

 

* * *

 

But when it _is_ bad, it’s her own fault.

 

The weather has turned sweltering; Tabris can barely drink fast enough to replace what she loses from sweating, and she has to take four paces for everyone else's three. Not just because of her height, but because of her armor. It weighs her down, and she knows it. It's not until they're examining the remains of a caravan just outside Lothering that she realizes everyone else knows it too.

 

Leliana holds up a suit of leather armor, if one could really call it a suit - it's a low cut leather bodice with studded shoulders and a skirt of impractical fluttering straps - and closes one eye as if she's picturing it on a lithe elven body.

 

"What do you think, Warden?" she asks in her musical voice, syllables tinted with her accent like colored sunlight through the stained windows of the Chantry. "I think it suits you, no?"

 

Tabris conceals her trepidation as best as she can while she tries to form an answer. "Isn't it a bit... Scant?"

 

"Scant? Are you that concerned with modesty?" Morrigan asks, rifling through soft linen clothes with a scavengers lack of empathy. "I would hardly think anything is worth forcing yourself to wear such heavy armor all the time, especially when you’re not used to it.  Take Alistair, for example.”

 

Preoccupied examining an axe, Alistair’s own plate armor seemed to clink self-consciously as he is pulled into the conversation.  “Take me… where, exactly?” he asks.

 

Morrigan verbally breezes past him. “Your fellow Warden is more than equipped to stand there and take blows - your fighting style is much more suited to lighter armor, faster movements… quicker thinking.”

 

“And here I was afraid you were about to compliment me. Phew!” he whistled, as he moved on to the next corpse. “Glad we dodged that one.”

 

Tabris grits her teeth for a moment longer - perhaps too long, as Leliana's expression shifts and she opens her mouth as if to make some amendment to her argument - and then snatches the armor from her companion’s hands. “All right.  I’ll change.”

 

The difference in comfort is immediate.  Her shoulders tingle, freed from a burden she hadn’t really noticed, and the skin of her thighs are beaded with sweat but now cooling in the breeze. It’s more pleasant to wear in the physical sense, but less so in the mental one. Her chainmail had been uncomfortable, but comforting.  It had been stifling, but secure.  This is…

 

“See? Don’t you feel lighter already?” Morrigan crows. “I knew it would suit you.”

 

Tabris peels back one of the leather straps that are already sticking to her thigh and casts Alistair a wary look. His complexion is faintly flushed from the heat and the effort as he runs his gloved fingertips over a dead woman’s face, closing her eyes. When he looks up, there’s no moment of hazy, lustful consideration, no dread curling in her stomach; just a flicker of eye contact before he returns to his task, lips moving faintly as he mutters something to the body. Foolishly, she assumes he is the only one she should be afraid of, and relaxes.

 

They pile the bodies on the worst-damaged wagon, wrapping them in soiled cloth too weather-worn to salvage, and Alistair pours lamp oil on them as Leliana readies a flaming arrow. DIsease is a concern even in the Blight, and Tabris stands well back from the heat of the blaze as the bodies burn.  It's a sobering sight.

 

But the peace doesn't last long. The pounding of feet makes Tabris look to the forest's edge, where a cluster of human-like shapes flicker in the tree shadows. It’s not the Darkspawn, either - Alistair is just as surprised as the rest of them, except for maybe Morrigan, whose staff is already starting to glow as the first gleam of metal appears and a host of voices erupt in angry shouts. As they draw nearer, Tabris hears Leliana hiss something unintelligible under her breath; it’s a band of human men and women, driven to desperation by the Blight, and she has to draw her sword against people she would rather leave alone.

 

The air is alive with magic, disorienting flashes of light and the sweet-sulfur scent of lyrium as Morrigan slings spells from the sidelines.  Frost coats the edge of Tabris's blade as her dagger's arc ends dangerously close to the tail of one such bolt, but at least it misses her arm this time. Tabris spins her blade around in time to stab a female in the neck, arterial spray coating her forearm and chin as the woman gags and falls at her feet.

 

It's not a thrill to kill them, not a satisfaction like fighting the Darkspawn which they hunt like pests and slaughter like animals, but there is a little sigh of relief in the back of her mind every time she sees one fall - one less to deal with. One less human to threaten and bully her people, one less to worry about betraying her.  One less to save only to have them spit slurs at her heels as she walks away. One less.

 

She senses the threat a moment before it happens, has just enough time to realise she's been standing still too long before something huge knocks into her.  Her booted feet slip on the blood-soaked ground, and the human man falls on her, pinning her to the ground, as the back of her head cracks against the knee of the fallen woman.

 

Stars burst behind her eyes, and she struggles first with the intent of fighting back - but then her heels can't find traction, knees falling open and the man ends up between them; panic spikes her heart rate and blurs her mind worse than the blow had.  The blade mere inches from her neck is an afterthought as the memories flood her - the stench of sweat and armor, the stone wall cracking against the back of her head as a rough, gloved hand tried to work its way under her skirt - and she is pinned again and she can't move and someone is in between her legs and she can't get him away, she can't escape and she's terrified and she can't, she can't she can't can't--

 

_CLANG!_

 

The sky opens up, blue and innocent above her, moments before a man in armor casts her in his shadow. His shield arm retreats from the stunning blow as he pivots, swinging a sword at another shape on the ground.  The blade glistens ruby red, and for a sickening, confusing moment, it's Nola's death all over again. But then the human with the shield speaks to her and his voice is soft, gentle, concerned.

 

"Tabris?"

 

She shakes her head as though it will remove the cotton from between her ears.  It brings her back to the present, at least, and as the panic fades away the guilt makes her even more sick. She panicked. She could have died over something that didn't even happen.  She's not fit to be a Warden.

 

"That was a nasty fall, are you injured?" the voice asks again, a little more tense this time.

 

The world around her is too bright - she can't see details and doesn't deserve to still be breathing.  Stupid, weak, foolish. Her body is still trembling, and she locks her thighs together and bends her knees. Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Should have been slaughtered like her fiance. Should be dead.  Should be, but isn't. Tabris manages to sit up before her vision whites out entirely, and she realises she might be worse off than she thought.

 

"I'm serious, are you alright?" he asks again, and she realises she can't remember his name.

 

"Hello?" she croaks, her body starting to settle into shivers. The gore-slick earth is spinning underneath her, bile rising in her throat.  "I hit my head."

 

"Oh.   _Oh_ ," and then someone is scooping her up in their arms as if she weighs nothing. "Right, I'm taking us all back to camp."

 

"No," she whines, writhing weakly in the strong grip, muscles too distracted with shivering to cooperate properly. She doesn't want to go with him, doesn't want to be carried off anywhere. Her fingernails slide uselessly across the plate armor, and when she finally rakes across the skin of his jaw, there's no force behind the gesture.  The man carrying her shrugs her deeper into his grip and makes some low, soothing noise, but he still reeks of blood and she can't figure out where she is anymore.

 

Another voice cuts in, female and shrill - it makes Tabris think of a raven or a carrion crow, mocking them from the eaves of the Arl's estate. "So now _you_ want to take charge and lead? How convenient."

 

"Pity you never learned any healing magic out in those wilds," comes the acidic reply of her captor, her savior. "But then again, I suppose if you'd ever been seriously hurt your mother would have just eaten you."

 

Her head lolls back against the soldier's forearm, and a frustrated tear escapes her closed lids as she drops into unconsciousness like a stone into a bottomless pond.

 

* * *

 

Tabris recovers from her concussion after a day of rest, with Leliana bringing her fresh water and cool cloths for her forehead as her warhound laid beside her and whined intermittently. Her frustration lasts much longer, however, and she's back in the full chainmail when she finally ventures out of the tent.  Alistair is sitting by the ashes of last night's fire, and he freezes in the process of getting up when she looks up.

 

"Well," he starts, only after she's sat down adjacent to him in a heap of exhausted clinks, "I was going to ask if you were feeling any better, but I think I got my answer."

 

"I'm fine," Tabris responds automatically anyway, feeling cold in the sunlight.

 

The blood has been washed off his armor, and sharp-edged prismatic reflections skitter across the ground as Alistair leans forward.  His hands wring at the empty air, she assumes in a nervous gesture, and she trains her gaze on them instead of his face.

 

"Look, I-- I don't want to pry, but no one would blame you if you wanted to take it easy--"

 

"I'm fine," she repeats, edging some steel into her tone, more from paranoia than anger.  She won't let herself be some fragile victim.  Shianna wasn't. Neither should she.

 

Alistair sighs.  His hands curl into fists and she wearily braces herself for a fight, but instead of aggression he just radiates concern.  It glitters off him like the sun on the steel plates, scattering rainbow stars to dance at her feet, and she reminds herself that nothing happened.  Soris saved her the first time, and Alistair did today.

 

Nothing else about him is like Soris, however, when she finally meets his gaze. He is fair-haired, tall and broad, sturdy and witty; but there's still that spark of warmth when she mutters a "thank you" that feels like an echo of home. His forgiveness is faster than she would have expected, and his relief is just as obvious.

 

"Thank you for not dying. Just try not to slip too often, all right?" He taps the back of his head with a grin. "Can't let both of the Wardens end up drooling idiots, can we?"

 

She presses her lips together to conceal a smile, but the way the prisms from his armor shuffle across the ground as he relaxes tells her she's getting worse at hiding things after all.

 

* * *

 

In defiance to her own fears, she wears the leather armor again the next day, walks in the lead with the gentle swish of leather murmuring with every footfall instead of the clamor of metal. She refuses to be afraid or uncomfortable, and the next time they come across clumsy human bandits, she leads the ambush and takes the first kill. And if she shakes when she wipes gore off the inside of her thighs from where it had splattered from an especially determined stab, no one says anything.

 

* * *

 

The warhound stays in her tent for a few more nights, and Tabris can’t say she minds waking up smelling like dog every morning even if it does make Leliana’s lip curl.  It’s worth it to have something warm and solid and friendly there when she wakes up, every muscle wired for battle before her eyes are even open. He doesn’t ask her complicated questions, doesn’t remind her that others have had it so much worse and she’s a fool for letting it impact her in this way. He just licks her face, whether it’s already damp or not.

 

Alistair, at least, doesn’t seem to mind the smell. He’s not changed into armor yet and he seems so much smaller in plainclothes when he comes out of his tent a few days after the attack near Lothering. Covering his mouth with his hand as he yawns, he shambles over and sits down on the ground beside her. He’s still solid and imposing like a stone wall, but he’s starkly, obviously unarmed. It’s a look she hasn’t seen on him before, and she’s almost envious of his lack of concern.

 

“You’re up early,” he mutters, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Is that food?” He nods at the small bubbling pot, carefully hung over the newly revived campfire.

 

“Fresh spider meat,” she replies before she can stop herself. “Well stewed and falling off the bone.”

 

His reaction is delayed, but no less amusing. Alistair recoils at first, jerking upright with a hissed, “Maker’s breath, what did-- is this Morrigan’s idea of breakfast? Wait,” and he turns to give her a suspicious look. “Spiders… don’t have bones, do they?”

 

Tabris shakes her head. He stares at her for a moment longer, confusion still playing out over his features, before he gives up and slumps forward again.

 

“I happen to take breakfast very seriously, thank you,” and he crosses his arms over his knees, burying his nose in his elbow.  “Wake me up when it’s time for breakfast, and not just jokes.”

 

She doesn’t reply; simply stirs the embers with the remains of what might have been a hoe, years ago, but was now a slightly bent wooden pole with a flat metal shape at the end. But she doesn’t move away, either, and doesn’t feel as tense as she would have been before with a human so near. In some ways, Alistair himself reminded her of her dog.  Not in the same way that Morrigan related them, but his presence was slowly becoming less of an intrusion on her life.

 

Setting aside the fire-stirrer, Tabris pulled off her glove and laid her fingertips on Alistair’s far shoulder, hesitating only a moment longer before she gave him a light, careful scratch. It was a simple gesture, one she’d picked up from years of living at the Alienage. When words could damn you to abuse as much as your actions, you learned subtlety - and Tabris is fluent in gentle, soothing touches. This, however, is an act of curiosity and defiance more than anything else - how far can she push him? How much does he actually trust her?

 

Alistair hums.  She freezes, then does it again.  He heaves a sigh and leans into her touch, and she represses a laugh. Just like the dog, then.

 

Her fingers move on their own, up and down his spine, across his shoulders, etching assurances into his skin.  With every exhale, he seems to collapse more and more, like a puffball mushroom, and as she watches the sun crawl further up the horizon she lets her mind wander to earlier times. Times of play, times of work, times of joy and fear - it’s only when the knowledge that she will never really go back home starts to tighten like a noose around her neck that her hand stops.  She glances back at Alistair and finds him watching her out of the corner of one eye. Alarm prickles the hair on the back of her arms - has she gone too far? Been too casual around someone who is not only her senior, but is socially considered to be above her? Is he a threat--

 

He huffs and turns his head, burying it in the crook of his other elbow, but the tops of his small rounded ears look sunrise-pink in the early morning light.  And Tabris isn’t sure what to do with this information, if it’s information at all, so she just yanks her glove back on and gives the no-spiders-added porridge a stir.

 

* * *

 

Their next battle is against Darkspawn, and Morrigan is resting after a rather nasty eye injury so she's fighting with the stoic if insulting Qunari they call Sten, Leliana and Alistair. It takes a level of trust she’s not sure she has to dart underneath Leliana’s arrows, and a level of skill she knows she lacks to dodge Sten’s two-handed swings, so Tabris finds herself more often than not fighting in the shadow of Alistair’s shield. She wants to believe it's the Tainted blood in her body, or the fact that she's known him the longest, but she's aware of his presence more now. She can _sense_ him; anticipate his movements, track him, dance around him and skewer a genlock in his blind spot before he even can turn to face it. But she is still too wary to ask if he feels it too, if he felt it with Duncan - and what it would mean if he didn't. If he _did_. So she just works around that, too, incorporates it into her fighting style just like she has her fear of being cornered and held down and... Other things.

 

Morrigan had been right - leather suits her speed better, and she side-steps out of a hurlock's swing that might have decapitated her otherwise.  Her shoulderblades feel the kiss of plate armor as Alistair's back presses against her for one fleeting second, and it's like a nod of acknowledgement when they part.

 

They work well together, which is better than she might have hoped, given his near-capricious swings from the earnest soldier to the witty jester; and yet she feels guilt for that, too.

 

* * *

 

And when it starts to go wrong, it's not in the way that she expected.

 

She considers it an accomplishment that she's not afraid to seek out his company at dinner time.  By all rights, she should dislike him on race and sex alone - but of the four companions who speak, Alistair offends her the least. Leliana is accidentally tactless, which would be charming if her insinuations of trophy elves didn't make Tabris feel sick; Sten is deliberately tactless, and conversing with him leaves her more exhausted than both jogging in heavy chainmail and fighting the Darkspawn; and Morrigan seems to delight in being as contrary to Tabris's own moderately good nature as possible. Which leaves Alistair and the dog, and she’s already sleeping with the dog, so usually she listens to him talk about his childhood in Redcliffe and the Chantry or his opinions on Mages, which tend to be loud and occasionally aimed across the camp at Morrigan. Or they were, until she cast a freezing spell down the back of his neck and threatened to cast the next one in his pants. That particular night had nearly ended in a row, and had taken all her persuasion skills to get them both to settle down.

 

But tonight was considerably more peaceful - they’d found a stream and Tabris had taken the opportunity to take her hair out of their typical tightly braided buns to wash it. By now, however, it’s drying and starting to get unmanageable, so she walks past Alistair to seek out some help. If Tabris held onto the offense of every slight someone dealt her, she’d probably have turned and joined the Archdemon herself by now, and the sweet little ex-Sister seems the type to know how to braid.

 

“Um, Leliana?” she starts, catching the young woman’s attention by the fire - Leliana looks up and over with a sudden, knowing smile.

 

“I suppose you’d like me to help you with your hair, yes?”

 

“That would be lovely, thank you.” Tabris passes Leliana a small bone comb and settles herself on the ground between Leliana’s knees. The ex-Sister is surprisingly gentle as she works the comb through the long, scarlet locks.

 

“I’ve told you before that I envy your hair, haven’t I? I used to have it long when I lived in Orlais, but it was lighter in color then. Yours is such a pretty color, too; a very uncommon red.”

 

“Thank you.” She hasn’t cut it since her mother died; Tabris had once meant to grow it out until she found the humans who murdered her mother, but she has lost all hope of catching them now. But it’s still a touch of luxury and finery, like what used to be in such short supply in the Alienage. “I try to take good care of it.”

 

“I have some oils to comb through your hair, if you’d like.  I’ve had them since I came to the Chantry, but I felt such opulence was unnecessary in a place of worship and study. Would you like me to use them on you?”

 

“If you’d like.” She gathers her hair up against her scalp, trying to prevents the ends from touching the ground, and catches Alistair's eye from across the campfire. She offers a slight smile in greeting. He returns it, and goes back to cleaning grime off his shield.

 

But she still senses his eyes on her when Leliana returns, and it seems she isn't the only one.

 

"I brought an extra brush if you'd like to join us, Alistair," and Tabris glances up just in time to watch the other Warden jump at Leliana's call. "Since you don't seem to be too busy with that shield."

 

"I, ah-- was wondering if you wanted any help. That looks like a rather daunting task, and I’d hate for you to still be at it come sunup.” His hands seem to twitch, nervously, in the flickering light of the fire before he sets his armor aside. Leliana shifts to the side, and Tabris relies on her vague sense of his location as he steps behind her.

 

It’s not until they’ve both got a fistful of her hair that she feels a flicker of alarm that she has two humans behind her, in her blind spot, with every possible advantage to render her helpless. Her jaw clenches as the thought, spine stiffening - and then Alistair’s knee bumps gently against her shoulder, and the unease is blown away.

 

She trusts him. A quiet thought that drifts across her mind like a wisp of cloud crossing the face of the moon. She trusts Alistair. He won’t hurt her.  Very deliberately, she leans back against his leg, feels him shift first out of the way and then into a new position so she can rest against him.

 

“Now, put a little bit of the oil here, at the base of the teeth - just a _little_ bit, not that--” A disgruntled noise from Alistair cuts Leliana off, and Tabris bites the inside of her lip to keep from laughing. “Yes, that’s it. Now be gentle--”

 

“I _have_ brushed a woman’s hair before.” She feels a slight tug on her right side, probably Alistair trying to plow through a snarl.

 

The ever-present lilt in Leliana’s voice makes it hard to tell if she is being sarcastic. “I’m sure you have, Alistair. You must have been quite popular with all the old Chantry sisters.”

 

“... Is Morrigan’s influence contagious, or do you just enjoy mocking me?”  His fingers, warm and unhindered by the gloves, skim the nape of her neck as he gathers her hair up. Her awareness of him sharpens almost to a point - she takes in a small breath and forces down a shiver.

 

“The latter, thankfully.” Leliana’s comb comes rather close to catching Tabris’s ear - she reaches up and cups them away from her scalp preemptively. “Oooh, sorry, are you all right?”

 

“Just taking precautions. You’re fine.” It does make their voices a bit harder to hear, which is a lovely side effect, and eventually Leliana settles into a tale of one of Andraste’s adventures.  Tabris’s attention drifts across the camp as her friends continue to comb away, relaxing against Alistair’s knee as best as she can. It doesn’t take them until sunup, but she is more than ready for bed by the time her hair is finished.

 

She pulls both loose braids over each shoulder, examining them - she can tell a slight difference between the two, Leliana’s is tighter and Alistair’s will probably have to be redone in the morning before she tucks them into buns, but she’s especially pleased with the oils effect. A little distracted, if anything, because she doesn’t notice that her dog isn’t following her to the tent this time; Alistair is.

 

She looks up at last, and he stops dead. “Yes?”

 

“Oh, um… good night,” he offers, raising his hand in what might have been a salute but dies part of the way there.

 

“Good night, Alistair.”

 

He smiles, again, much broader than her own, and there’s almost a bounce to his step when he returns to his previous task. She ducks back into her tent, and feels the tips of her ears warm with satisfaction.

 

* * *

 

But then as their group grows, she finds more and more excuses to be with Alistair than the others. Wynne would be reading by the firelight, Zevran would have the unnerving tendency to eye her up and down as he talked, Leliana would be exhausted after an especially harrowing battle; again and again, they fight together, talk together, are together. It crept up on her like ivy covering a wall, and it wasn't until it was too late that she noticed how much he had grown on her.

 

And like ivy, it chokes her when Alistair offers her a rose, because this is more than touches and smiles and jokes about lampposts - this is a gesture she doesn’t know if she can reciprocate in full. But Tabris accepts the flower, and the smile, and everything else that goes with it, and she prays to a God not quite her own that, like slaying the Archdemon, she’ll survive however this ends.

 

* * *

 

And of course, it’s only when she thinks she is better that everything becomes worse.

 

Hespit’s voice is sandpaper on Tabris’s nerves, chainmail on her blisters, echoing in her ears with every merciless step she takes deeper and deeper into the Trenches. Every inhale tastes like dust, every room feels like a tomb, but she can’t stop.  If she does for even a moment, she’s afraid she won’t be able to move again.

 

She’s panicking again. She can feel it in her chest with every stale breath that makes her feel like she’s choking, but overriding it all is guilt. She had been too late for Shianna, too late for Hespit, too late for whatever monster the darkspawn had made out of this poor dwarf woman. She was too late to save Duncan, to save the Dalish werewolf woman, to save the Mage in the demon’s nightmare.  Too late, too late, always so damnably--

 

A bark of pain erupts from her mouth, shattering the tense silence, as a leghold trap snaps hungrily around her ankle. All of her pent-up energy explodes into blind, frustrated rage, and she tries to storm forward anyway.  Metal teeth sink through the leather, into her flesh, and gnaw on her ankle bone as she is jerked backward. Tabris sinks to her knees with a curse.

 

She hears a half-step and a clank of armor behind her. “Do you--”

 

“No,” she cuts Alistair off as she wraps her fingers around the jaws of the trap, trying to force it open. “You wouldn’t know how to disarm it anyway.”

 

Ogrhen’s voice is especially unwelcome. “I don’t think you can disarm a trap that’s already been sprung, Warden.”

 

Too late for the trap, too. Tabris wipes the back of her glove across her forehead, then her fingers against her leather-armored chest, and wrenches the trap open with a burst of grim fury. “There, see?” She forces herself to stand, toe of her injured foot dragging a smear of blood across the ground as she sidesteps out of the trap. “I got it.”

 

The other traps she sees give her an excuse not to turn around, especially as she finds herself fighting back tears.  A simple gesture holds the party back as she purposefully _doesn't_ limp from trap to trap, clearing the path for her friends and finally, shakily, standing up once more.

 

"It's safe," she grits, and lets Wynne see to her ankle with light-wrapped fingers. The healing only stings a little bit, no worse than the concern in Alistair's gaze that she pointedly avoids, and Wynne has the tact to stay silent when Tabris resumes her furious pace.  Stone halls give way to a tunnel with rough footing, Alistair catches her elbow when she stumbles, and there's no time to pull away from his gentle grip before they come in sight of the Broodmother. A monolith of tentacles and sagging, useless breasts that bellows like a calf dragged away from its mother, it towers over them.

 

She's already pulling her weapons out and charging when Ogrhen swears viciously, and she rolls out of a tentacles grasp to come right up to the victim. Her blades sink into violet, swollen flesh, and the beast howls as Tabris whispers apologies into every strike. For being too late and not stopping this sooner, for the pain she is causing it now, for all that Hespit had to survive alone. When she's finally knocked back, her spine collides with the stone walls of the Arl's estate but there is no time for chainmail, no time for fear or her own shallow suffering, and she's back on her feet within moments.

 

She doesn’t hear the distant roar of the other Darkspawn coming, doesn’t hear the screams and bellows of the ghoul under her blades; just Hespit’s haunted rasping voice, just Shianni’s defeated plea.  And Tabris prays that it is mercy when she scales the heaving body and plunges both blades into the back of the Broodmother’s skull. Gore erupts from the injury, splattering across her face as she crosses the blades and severs whatever it left of the brain stem, and rides the beast as it slumps forward like a mudslide of flesh.

 

This time, she doesn’t stumble when she hits the ground - she outright falls three paces away from the body, and Alistair isn’t fast enough to catch her.  She rolls onto her back and lays her forearm, sticky with blood, across her eyes.

 

“I’m fine,” she lies preemptively, feeling his footsteps jog across the ground to her side. “I just need," her voice ebbs and surges with her gasping breaths, "to lay down for a while.”

 

Wynne speaks, filling in Alistair’s hesitant silence. “I think we could all spare a couple minutes rest after that battle, don’t you?”

 

“I feel like I could use a couple other things more than a sodding rest.  Like a drink. Or my wife.”

 

There’s a swish of something flying through the air, then the slap of it being caught. “Here,” Alistair relates as Oghren gives a grunt of pleasure. “Some ale from a place called Redcliffe. A bit too bitter for my tastes.”

 

He sits down, or maybe kneels, a pace away from her, but she still doesn’t want to look. Just hides her face in the crook of her elbow and takes in breath after dusty breath. When she throws her arm to the side at last and looks up at him through one eye, the other stuck closed with blood, she grins.

 

“Do I still look like a rose?” Tabris asks, and it can’t help but come out a little bitter. Alistair makes a show of glancing down her body, splattered liberally with gore and dust from the battle.

 

“You mean, aside from that ravishing shade of red you’re wearing?” Dutifully, she cracks a laugh that feels like it splinters midway out, sharp edges cutting the inside of her mouth, and then his expression goes more serious.  “Yes. I think you still do.”

 

Tabris looks back up at the close stone ceiling, rubs the heel of her hand over her blood-crusted eye, and still doesn’t know how to respond.

 

* * *

 

She kisses him just on the edge of the Roads - pulls him aside and can still taste his eager, incredulous gasp of “here? now?” on his lips as her pulse thrums in her veins.  She kisses him because he is the closest thing to the sun there is down here, and she feels colder without him; she kisses him because more people will die based on her decisions once they enter Orzammar and she wants him to remember her as a savior and not a reaper; she kisses him because he finds her beautiful even with her thorns, and because she loves him.

  
Yet Tabris also kisses him because she doesn’t know if she can, and when they part she has her answer. And it’s not the one she thinks she wanted.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> broke what was _supposed_ to be the second part in half because it got to be so long..... anyway here you go

Things change after that, in small increments. Wynne’s gaze darkens with disapproval occasionally when Alistair cracks a joke meant for Tabris's ears alone, Morrigan makes flippant comments about propriety and priorities and the stupidity of affection, Zevran walks a little further away from her than he used to; these are all the price she wishes she didn’t have to pay just to feel like, for once in her life, she had chosen something entirely for herself. But she pays it anyway and makes sure to socialize with the others as much as she does with Alistair.

 

Thankfully, there’s always something bigger to worry about in the daylight hours, and none looms bigger before her than the oak and iron gate between her and the Alienage in Denerim.

 

The soldier guarding it keeps his voice low as he explains. “The new Arl had to purge the place after there was an uprising. Old Arl’s family and most of his castle was butchered by some crazy elves.”

 

Her fingers curl around the flat bars, and she remembers how she’d wrapped her fingers in the same way around the dagger she plunged into Vaughan’s neck. Even with Alistair behind her, the sky vast and clean above her, she still goes cold as the guard continues.

 

“Whole place is still in chaos, and there’s word of a possible plague. Sorry, I can’t let you in.”

 

“A purge?” Leliana asks, just barely audible.

 

Zevran’s voice is more cold and serious than she’s ever heard it, and she is grateful he speaks for them both as a fellow elf. “A well organised slaughter.”

 

“Oh, Maker…”

 

The scream starts in the soles of her boots, and she pivots on the dying grass to march across the Marketplace; it creeps up her calves and she picks up speed until she’s jogging, nearly colliding with a human child. Her companions try to keep up, Leliana peppering Zevran with questions she can’t make out, and once they’re out the gates Tabris breaks into a full out run.

 

Her weapons smack against her spine - she unbuckles them and lets them slough off like a snake’s skin as the scream reaches her stomach, eating away at her heart as she tries to put as much distance between herself and the humans as possible. Survival means never letting them see, never letting anyone see, means smiling when they call her ‘knife ears’ and try to look down her bodice.  Survival means running like a coward and leaving her people behind to be slaughtered. Survival means becoming a monster, Taint and all.

 

And finally, the scream reaches her throat and Tabris falls to the ground as it steals the air from her lungs.  The walls of Denerim, the trees of the Brecilian Forest, the ice of the Frostback mountains, the bogs of the Wild all seem to ring with her cry, a counterpoint to the Archdemon’s roar, as the sheer pain and injustice of it all tears through her body and leaves her sobbing on the grass.

 

What a fool she was - she thought that they would be safe, shielded by the influence of the Grey Wardens and by her claiming all the blame. She had been ready to die the moment Shianni had smashed the bottle against the back of Vaughan’s head and every day since then had been borrowed time, slipping by in a whirlwind, and--

 

She had left them all behind to be penned up and butchered like animals. Clutching her sides, she wails into the earth, into the indifferent grass and the distant sky; if only, if only, if only she had stayed behind she would have gone down fighting with her kin. The Maker only knew how many survived, even - oh, poor Soris, and Nessa whom she had lobbied to leave her parents and stay behind. Alarith, her father, Shianni… Every fiber of her body burns and aches for them, for all she should have done to protect them and all she should be doing now.

 

Eventually the scream peters out like a guttering candle, and she is left on her knees trembling in the aftermath. She hears Alistair approach and knows that she could kill him, she will kill him, if he so much as speaks, and she jerks her head up to glare at him accordingly, edges of her teeth bared in her grimace. He is setting aside his weapons, though, slow and deliberate - she watches him warily through tear-blurred eyes, but he has often been the hardest one of her companions to predict.

 

It's not until he lays aside his chestpiece, leaving his body soft and open from the waist up, that she really understands how remarkable he is.

 

He kneels in front of her. "Um," Alistair starts, a true king's son in nature and eloquence, and holds out his arms in comfort and surrender. Offering up all that he has and all that he is, for her, just like this. She knows she could kill him, knows that he knows this too, but from this moment on Tabris knows also that she never will.

 

She surges forward and accepts his hug.

 

There is no scream this time, no burning fury spewing from her chest like dragonfire. Instead there is a silent downpour like a summer rain, and she cries silently into his cloth-covered shoulder.

 

He doesn’t say anything trite, as if he could fully understand the weight of this; nor does he say it was going to be okay, because she’s not sure if anything will be again.  Alistair just wraps his arms around her and lets his body muffle her sobs, lets her fingernails dig into his spine as she pictures tearing apart the new Arl with her bare hands.

 

Eventually, her anger cools, leaving her hardened like hot steel plunged into water, and Tabris rises to her feet. Leliana’s head is bowed in prayer, and Zevran offers up her discarded blades with an echo of the hate she feels in his smile. She shrugs her arms through the sword belts, fitting them between the faint curves of her breasts.

 

“I believe we have some words with Loghain, yes?” Alistair offers as he buckles his chestpiece back on.

 

Tabris takes in one more breath and nods, no longer trusting her voice, and leads them back to Denerim.

 

* * *

 

Killing the Arl is over too fast, for her taste - even as he writhes and chokes on his own blood at her feet, Tabris almost wants to ask Wynne to heal the bastard so she can mortally wound him again, and again, one for every elf in the Alienage he was so proud to have ‘pruned back.’ She knows this is a dangerous passion, too, one that she could get drunk on, but she still can’t help but want it anyway.  She watches him die with no small satisfaction before they head their way back through the dungeon and up the stairs, still reeking of blood.

 

But not a drop of it is spilled upstairs, not even when Cauthrien challenges her to drop her weapons and she lets her barely-cleaned swords clatter to the ground. They’re too close to the Landsmeet to simply be soldiers - they must be politicians as well, and politicians are cowards.

 

"If we get out of this," Alistair whispers to her as he follows suit, "you might want to practice a bit more with that sword of yours. I'd swear you've forgotten how to use it."

 

"When we get out," she corrects him, holding Cauthrien’s dark glare on the hopes that it keeps her eyes from Anora’s disguise, "I will gladly practice on you if you think I've lost my touch."

 

* * *

 

She dreams of a house, in the middle of a field that seems to go on forever in all directions under a heavy, too-bright sky. The grass susurrates around her as she walks towards and knocks on the door. Her mother opens it; her features are blurred from Tabris's own fading memory of them, but her heart sings in response.

 

There are so many things she wants to tell her mother, so many things she wants to ask, but Tabris doesn't even have time to step over the threshold before her mother's arms are wrapped around her.

 

" _The strongest parts about you, my dear_ ,” a voice whispers, “ _are the ones that no one can take away._ "

 

Her mother's arms go cold against her back, and then Tabris wakes up in a cell. There are no canvas tent walls to protect her, no clothes, not even a blanket and she arches off the surface with an aborted gasp. Prison. Anora. The war. Reality is like a cruel downpour of rain, soaking her to the bone and washing away the warmth of the dream.

 

She wonders if she's forgetting something important.

 

“Oh, thank the Maker you’re awake.” Alistair’s voice jerks her attention to him with a bird-like twitch of her head, and she has to blink to focus her eyes on him.  He’s equally undressed, seated against the wall in the same cell, and she has to thank whatever idiot allowed both Wardens to be imprisoned together before her mind slips to darker ideas about her captors.

 

Her mouth falls open, words dying in her mouth, questions she is terrified to ask, and instead she closes her eyes. Pressing a hand against her lower stomach, she pushes down.  Nothing - no foreboding ache, for she didn't doubt their size alone would hurt.  Nothing had happened, so there was no point in getting worked up about it.

 

"Are... Are you all right?" her companion asks; she moves her hand away with the most nonchalance she can muster, and nods. Alistair's shoulders slump with relief. "Good. I was worried when you didn’t wake up. I really must have a thick skull, eh?”

 

His laugh is halfhearted at best and ends in a nervous huff as he averts his gaze and hides the lower half of his face in his crossed arms. She follows suit, gathering her wits and taking stock of their situation.  Only one set of footsteps, no conversation or other sounds of movement - a lone guard and no apparent prisoners here. Faint voices down the hall. What was her dream about? It's distracting, like dried grass down the back of her shirt.

 

Alistair fidgets; she looks up to see the tightening of his jaw as he whispers. "You... do have a plan, right?" She can hear the implied _you didn't let us get captured for nothing, did you?_ hidden behind his words, and knows that dreams can wait.

 

She doesn’t have a scrap of armor about her, not even the wedding ring she wore still in her fiance’s honor - but she is still Tabris, and she will not wait for them to come for her. “Call the guard,” she instructs, voice low and smooth. “I’ll draw him in, and we’ll ambush him. Quick and quiet, understand?”

 

Alistair nods, gathering himself together to stand and call out in a pathetic, frightened voice. “Excuse me, sir! My friend, she’s sick!”

 

Tabris stretches herself out on her side, bending one knee - accentuate your hips, whispers Leliana's voice from days ago, an informal lesson on a bard's guiles - and holds her body up with feigned weakness.

 

“What’s wrong?” The guard looks nothing like the Arl’s men from just a few weeks back, and she is nothing like the young woman then. Her eyes raise to the human man’s face, glittering with vulnerability as she makes a show of coughing into her closed hand. His eyes drift down to her chest, and in that moment she knows she won’t let anyone touch her this time.

 

“Let’s take a look,” and he steps through the door with dark consideration in his eyes, “shall we?”

 

Then Alistair is shoving the door closed from the inside, trapping the guard. Tabris leaps to her feet, kicking the man’s knee out first with a crack of her heel, then thumping him in the temple with her elbow. It only takes a few moments, a few blows and the guard is down permanently.

 

She shakes her hand out and winces, catching Alistair's eye.  He's staring.  The spatter of blood on her cheek starts to itch - she rubs it away, feeling it smear across her cheekbone and palm, then wipes her hand on her thigh.  "What?"

 

"Oh," and he rolls his head with the motion, making a point of looking across the room, "nothing.  Just, um... Have I mentioned recently how glad I am we're on the same side?"

 

"No, you haven't," she starts, watches his blush trickle down to his shoulders and reconsiders her words. "But thank you. I'm glad we're on the same side, too."

 

"Good."

 

They share what might have been a moment, were it anyplace else in the world. Under other circumstances, she might have taken the pause to flick her sharp gaze over his bulky frame with something more than a soldier's consideration. But she doesn't, because that would be wildly inappropriate.

 

"We should probably," and Alistair gestures for the door, nerves audible in his voice, "find some clothes."

 

Tabris doesn't respond, finding action preferable as usual to words and creeps down the hallway. Thankfully, their things are stored in a crate just around the corner. She's wearing her leather bodice backwards as she tries to fix the back laces, still barefoot, when a door around the corner catches her attention.

 

"Wait," she sweeps a hand backwards, and Alistair stumbles, half in a pair of pants. Her hand jerks forward to what looks like an armory, and she steps out of her clothes to creep forward.

 

Alistair follows, his arms filled with their things, and he gives her an anxious look as she considers the guards armor. "Oh," he exhales in understanding. "Um, okay." He steps out of his clothes obediently and goes to select something in his size off the rack.

 

They have to help each other into the unfamiliar clothes - Tabris ignores the ghost of a tingle when his fingertips brush her spine, and Alistair screws his eyes tight when he has to kneel in front of her so she can rest the plate armor on his shoulders - and tuck their belonging into bags before they slink down the hallway. Predictably, the massive door that implies the exit is locked tight, and she's two steps from the office of some superior when Alistair yanks her backwards.

 

" _Wait wait wait wait wait_ ," he splutters, a panicked stream of soft hisses that remind her of cicada song. "You can't go in there! We'll get caught."

 

She peers down the hallway to a storeroom where two other guards are lounging and starts to walk again.  But Alistair's grip is tight, and Tabris turns to meet his gaze through the grill of the helmet.

 

"Look, you weren't awake when they brought us in here but... it's not just a prison. If they catch us, they'll _torture_ us." His voice shakes at the end, and his grip on his wrist grows tighter. "I saw it."

 

She's already opening her mouth to snap that she's not going to get them caught when she finally pays attention to what he's really saying. The flash of the whites of his eyes, the way he's still holding onto her hand. He's afraid.

 

And it occurs to her that this is something she can do - this subterfuge, this lying and smiling and reacting in the way they want is something she's been doing her whole life. This is something she can do that he can't, and he needs her. Why that thought is one that makes the blood surge in her veins, a rushing noise like the wind through the long grass, she doesn't know.  But it makes her strong.

 

So she reaches up and lays her free hand on his shoulder, leans up close enough for their helmets to nearly touch, and utters three gentle words.

 

"I'll protect you."

 

His lips part around another protest, but she's already walking away - Alistair follows with a strangled sound of frustration, but the important thing is that he still follows. "Fine. But you do the talking."

 

* * *

 

She likes the two guards that accompany them outside enough to merely gag and bind them and lock them in the nearest supply room, where they clatter against each other in terror and astonishment. Alistair makes some triumphant crack about how they have been spared by the indomitable Grey Wardens and Tabris nearly locks him in with them for spite. But they make it back to the Arl of Redcliffe’s estate in one piece, just in time to head to the Alienage.

 

There, being a reaper is preferable; it keeps her mind off what happened last time she was here, keeps Alistair too busy to pry about her engagement, keeps Shianni from asking too many questions. There, being a reaper is empowering, and the blood that coats her leather armor and skin mingles with her wounds until she doesn't feel mortal anymore. There, being a reaper is justifying and no one blames her when she buries her axe in the forehead of the Tevinter Mage.

 

She is neither the sweet but sly Tabris who hides her mother's wit under her father's submission, nor is she the kind but steel-boned Tabris who is rallying Ferelden against the blight. She is merely the swing of a sword, the splatter of gore, and the sigh of relief as the cage door falls open. And in her nothingness, she finds her courage.

 

* * *

 

That night, just a few days before the Landsmeet, Tabris sits under the great tree in the Alienage and works at repairing a chainmail glove. The red steel loops got caught in the end of a dagger and ended horribly twisted, and with an old nail she works at bending them back into shape. She supposes she could just throw it out - Maker knows they have better armor in spades - but old habits of conservation die hard. So she's fixing it in order to donate it to the troops, working by the firelight of the burning bodies and other refuse from the Tevinter warehouse.

 

Twilight had come and gone, along with a brief memorial service for the elves already dead or worse, and now there’s only a few clusters of her old friends and distant relatives outside of their homes. Zevran is doing his best to distract a rather shaken young elven woman, showing more compassion than she knows he wants to admit he has, Wynne is tending to some of the wounded who will actually let a human near them, and Alistair…

 

Alistair comes and sits beside her, emerging from the darkness with a rueful expression on his face. “She still won’t let me near her.”

 

“Shianni?” Tabris asks. Her cousin was just by the fire a moment ago, tossing a pitifully small rag-wrapped body into the controlled blaze. Eamon had given a seal of his approval for the cleanup, with Tabris offering her services as a guard to make sure the fire didn't spread, and it's the closest thing to peace she thinks the Alienage might have had since the wedding.

 

“No.  The dog.” He nods to a patchy, piebald colored stray hulking near the inner gate, one paw raised.  “I think she’s got some Mabari blood in her, but she won’t let me touch her. Hurts to be rejected by my own--”

 

And then he seems to notice the void of space around her, where no other elves are talking or mourning or drinking, and the self-deprecating joke dies in his mouth. The fire crackles hungrily, sending up a spray of sparks that die against the void of sky like short-lived stars, and in the flare of firelight she wonders what she looks like to him.

 

“... Sorry.”

 

Tabris goes back to working on the glove and Alistair sits beside her, crossing his arms and burying his face in them. If she had a free hand, she wonders if she’d have the courage to scratch his shoulders like she still does sometimes. But she can’t, so she doesn’t, and she simply keeps working at the dented metal, determined to make something useful of damaged goods. It feels oddly symbolic, after all they've been through.

 

They sit like that together, close but not touching, until Shianni approaches. “Can I speak with you for a moment, Cousin?” she asks, gaze skating across Alistair with all the indifference of a cloud shadow passing over a field.

 

“Of course.” Tabris rises and passes the glove off to Alistair, stepping easily across the familiar uneven ground and only wincing a little as a deep gash from this afternoon aches. They’re headed back to her father’s house, and she can feel the pull of Alistair’s attention all the way to the door.

 

Shianni ducks under the bunk bed they used to share and pulls out a bottle of spirits.  “Want any?” she asks, and Tabris takes a sip that burns all the way down.  It’s cheap stuff, probably too toxic to be sold in most marketplaces, but it reminds her of home as she sits on her old bed and passes the bottle back.

 

“How’s the world out there, Cousin?” Shianna asks as she takes a swig.

 

Tabris shrugs. “It’s big and it's different, but in some places it’s all the same, too.”

 

Shianni makes a humming noise of confusion around the lips of the bottle, mouth popping off with a sigh that reeks of fermentation. For all of Tabris's occasional eloquence, she doesn’t feel like explaining further on how there’s just different shades of injustice around every corner, and instead reclines on the bed with another sip that cauterizes her soul on the way down.

 

“How about you? How have you been?” It’s dangerously close to the thing she wants to ask - if Shianni still has nightmares of the Arl’s son, how she copes without being able to bury a blade in bloody flesh and cover her body in chainmail armor. But what Tabris went through is so many shades lighter than what her cousin endured, she doesn’t have the right to compare them.  Doesn’t have the right to ask.

 

“Individually, I’ve been all right,” which is the most Tabris thinks she can get out of her, “but obviously the whole place went to ruins after you left.  Lots of fighting, and not just with the humans.  Kind of wish you'd stayed. You always were good of talking your way out of a fight.”

 

“Glad I didn’t with Vaughan, though.”

 

“I’ll drink to that,” and Shianni mocks a toast. Tabris snatches the bottle back and takes another long pull.

 

“You’ll drink to _anything_ ,” she teases, to take the edge off the bastard's memory, and they both laugh.

 

The bottle’s nearly empty and the room is blurry at the edges by the time Shianni speaks again, a coy note entering her tone. “So, your Grey Warden. Is he big, different, but still the same in all the right places?”

 

Tabris snorts disbelievingly and takes a long drink while she tries to read Shianni’s expression. Maybe it’s just because she’s drunk and her senses are duller, but Tabris can’t see anything haunted behind her eyes - no look of accusatory betrayal, no cold hatred of the human race. And it burns as much as the alcohol does that she still feels those things, herself.

 

“You should probably get back to him before someone tries to stab him or something," Shianni continues, letting Tabris's silence slide. "He may have done some good with those slavers today, but--”

 

“--the roots of injustice run deeper than those of the Vhenadahl,” Tabris parrots back and rises. She blushes with shame and smothers a laugh as she has to grab for the wall to steady herself. “Maker’s breath, it’s been a while since I had some stuff that strong.”

 

She glances back at Shianni, who is still lounging on the bed with a faraway look in her glassy eyes. It frightens her.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“You even speak like someone else, now,” and Shianni’s voice is softer than she’s ever heard it. No, that’s a lie. Tabris has heard it that faint and broken before, and she feels a flash of nausea as the room spins. She leans against the wall of her bedroom for balance and feels cold brick through her woven dress for the briefest of moments.

 

Then Shianni laughs, crackling and careless like the bonfire outside, and Tabris laughs with her. They tuck the bottle back into hiding and saunter back outside, passing by Soris by the hearth as he reads with a pinched expression, and she takes in a deep breath of smoke and filth.

 

“Smells like home,” she jokes, feeling a flicker of sobriety at the same time she feels the pull of Alistair’s presence. He’s not by the fire; instead he’s by the gate, scratching underneath the chin of the piebald dog and she parts ways with her cousin to head to him.

 

The dog growls when she comes close, but Tabris just drops to her knees and pulls out a treat with a low whistle. The change is subtle, but immediate, and the dog limps forward to crunch down on the baked good as she examines the wound with a healer’s skill. Her hands are a little unsteady from the alcohol, but she binds the injury and presses a grinning, reckless kiss to the dog’s head.

 

“Oh, now that’s just unfair,” Alistair complains as the dog licks the underside of Tabris’s chin, reminding her how close the dog's fangs are to her throat. How even the smallest misstep and she could bleed out onto the ground. A most ignoble death. It doesn't bother her much, though.

 

“Maybe if you bothered to learn wilderness skills,” she offers as the dog wanders away, wagging her tail gently. A blur of movement at the edge of her vision implies that Alistair is shaking his head.

 

“No, I think it’s just you.”

 

She hums and takes the compliment, settling herself more comfortably on the ground and only barely remembering she’s wearing a short skirt. Alistair shifts closer, maybe, or she does - either way her awareness of him heightens, sibilant and curling like a snake scenting its prey.

 

“I wanted to ask you something,” he starts. Her eyes drift down, attracted by movement - he’s picking at the grass, pulling out little threads and shredding them with nervous fingers. “If… if you had any plans for after the Blight. After we’re done with this war.”

 

“We may never be done with this war,” she reminds him. The scent of burning bodies is enough to remind her of that. His grass shredding stills, then intensifies.

 

“I know, but… I… is there anyone you’re planning on, um… being with? Because if not, well, I wouldn’t--” his breath hitches, charmingly, “--I’d like to be with you. As much as I can be.”

 

It takes her a moment to realize, once more, what he’s actually saying. And it makes her heart pound in her chest, gives her flashes of memory - of gentle kisses and of less gentle hands, of chainmail and soft skirts, of stone floors and stone walls and all the conflicting, terrifying, exhilarating feelings of being with Alistair.

 

She rises to her feet; he follows, the metal of his armor clamoring in protest as she grabs him by the sword belt across his chest and swings him into the shadow of an abandoned house.  Her voice is low, thick with alcohol and drenched with equal parts truth and poison, fear and warning.

 

“Do you think I could ever fall in love with a human man?”

 

That was the easy question; if she hadn't already, they wouldn't be standing here, so close she can hear him swallow nervously and smell the hay-sweet scent of his skin. No, the hard one was the one she couldn't ask, much less answer. And it has nothing to do with the war.

 

“I… I would certainly hope so,” he replies, voice tender and vulnerable and so utterly at odds with his appearance that she wants to laugh; or perhaps cry at the injustice of it all, because how dare he do these things to her?

 

It feels wrong to kiss him, then, with the air filled with ash and the starlight muddied from the smoke of the bonfire. But it feels wrong not to press herself up on her toes, fingernails catching on the back of his neck as she licks along the seam of his lips, curls her tongue against his, drinks in the intoxicating sound of need he makes when she pulls back to breathe. To kiss him again, deeply, tilting his head to the side and letting his fingers creep across her collarbone, cup the back of her skull as she works her mouth against his. It feels wrong, but so many things have felt wrong for so long now she doesn’t care.

 

Tabris wipes sweat and what might have been dried blood off her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Let’s get back to camp, all right?”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potentially triggering content follows - nothing explicit, but the warning's there. Thanks for sticking with me this far! If

She loves Alistair. She trusts Alistair. His wit makes her smile, his flashes of loneliness and loss make her ache, his faith in her makes her feel strong. These things are real, as real as the twin swords that thump across her back with every step across the plains of Ferelden, but does she love him enough? Does she trust him enough? Will all that she has to offer ever  _be_  enough, to match all that he has given her?

 

But these are things she cannot answer, and her head throbs with the weight of all of them as she yanks off a boot in the safety of her tent, still feeling slightly slow from Shianni's moonshine. She had wiped off the worst of the day's grime earlier but is still looking forward to a cool bath at the Arl's estate in a couple days. Perhaps Leliana still has some of that oil for her hair, just for the Landsmeet.

 

And then, after that--

 

Alistair's presence outside the tent distracts her, and she pulls off the other boot while she waits, expecting him to enter. He's hovering, probably nervous - she invited him there, after everyone else was headed off to bed - and she shrugs out of her leather armor and into a large, comfortable shirt.

 

Crawling to the entrance of her tent, she peers out the flap - sure enough, he's pacing, with his back to her currently and  both hands buried in his hair. He's unarmed, out of armor too, and his obvious torment makes her bite her lip around a grin. ”A- _hem_.”

 

Alistair spins around so fast she's surprised he doesn't hurt his neck - but he seems none the worse for wear when he smiles, sheepishly.

 

“Oh, um.... Hello. Fancy seeing you here?” His smile drops, wiped away by the hand he runs down his face. “ _Maker's_   _beard_.  That was terrible, wasn't it? Sorry.”

 

Wordlessly, she holds the tent flap open, watches his blush intensify as he kneels - their fingers brush and she holds his gaze for a fleeting moment - and she shuffles backwards to let him inside. Then they're sitting, face to face, and Tabris doesn't know how she ever thought this would be simple. They both know the basics of the destination, but getting there seems an exhausting, insurmountable task like crossing the Frostback mountains on foot, and she wonders if either of them should have consulted a map.

 

His eyes are bright, warm and golden like ale, like a late summer morning, like her mother's hair. They travel over her body, from her bared bent knees to the folds of her shirt to her collarbones, and settle on her face again as he lets out a short breath. “I don't really know what to say,” Alistair admits.

 

She swallows, watches his eyes drop to her throat and darken with pupil. “Then don't say anything,” Tabris offers, leaning in and presses a gentle kiss against his lips. He responds, reaching up to cradle her jaw again, and it’s suddenly simple. Just one step at a time, one kiss leading into the other, as they learn about each other with each careful touch.

 

She knows he can feel her pulse hammering in her neck, betraying her calm facade. Everything feels like too much - her skin too hot, her heart too fast, his lips too excruciatingly slow - but she yearns for more. Longs to burn alive in this passion that sears her from the inside out, drives her to her knees to wrap her arms around him and feel the comforting solidity of his body against hers.

 

They part to breathe, which seems a frustrating frivolity, and she thinks she hears him swear before his hand is on the small of her back, pulling her forward and then pushing her onto her back. Her knees fall open on either side of his hips, and her breath catches in her lungs like a knife in her heart.

 

She gasps as his lips move to the side of her neck, hands still pressing her body against his; but she doesn't feel her bedroll beneath her but a cold stone wall. Panic fills her lungs like cold lake water, dragging her down like a stone and she claws against the man holding her down as the world around her flashes into memory.

 

_“Guess she really is a scrapper, huh?” Hard metal against her skin, her stomach, the air thick with the stench of blood and rattling in her throat as a hand clenches around her neck. “Give me a hand, will you?” And then someone is reaching up her clothes, running their fingers along the inside of her thigh and the world is blurring at the edges as she goes limp, exhaling and letting her eyes flutter closed. The pressure releases, and she locks her leg around the intruding hand, kicking out frantically with the other. She hits the floor hard just in time for the door to fly open, and--_

 

“--sorry, I’m sorry, what’s wrong? Say something, please!”

 

Coming back is like coming up for air, and her skin is drenched with sweat as she rolls onto her side, curling into a ball as she tries to remember how to breathe. The world comes back into focus - not the Arl's estate, but a tent. Tabris shudders, tries to force herself to sit up but her arms won't support her. Everything is happening too much at once, she’s too exposed and weak like this, and she can’t seem to breathe correctly.

 

A male voice, fragile and uncertain, cuts through her concentration. “Tabris? Are you...”

 

Her eyes, still too wide and unable to focus on anything, jerk to lock onto the human leaning away from her. His hand is clutching at his cheek, and she watches as it comes away speckled with blood. She looks back at her hands, her fingernails lined with crimson, and understands.

 

Fear turns to fury, and her body is back to molten metal hot, seeping out of her small, useless body in waves.  Anger not at Alistair, but at herself; self preservation building up layers of emotional armor because she was foolish, she let too much show. She knows he’d never aim to hurt her, but--

 

He reaches out for her and Tabris jerks away, half from lingering panic and half from overwhelming shame. “Don't,” she rasps, watches him flinch away and something break behind his eyes.

 

“I-- I should go,” he says, with a soft kind of finality that sounds like a death sentence. And she would fight, wants to fight; but in the end, she is neither a savior nor a reaper but a survivor, and she stays still as a statue, wrapping her blankets around her body for comfort, until he leaves.

 

Hot, horrified tears roll down her cheeks, and Tabris punches the floor with her fist as she presses her face into her bedroll. She will not sob and feel sorry for herself. She won't, she can't, she refuses.

 

But oh, she’d hurt him too, hadn’t she? Lashed out in her pain and her wounded pride at overcoming that fear, and she can still feel parts of his skin under her fingernails. The knife in her heart twists, digs deeper, and it hurts all the worse to know she’s buried one to match in Alistair.

 

* * *

 

 She wears chainmail the next day.

 

Before she's even left her tent, she knows exactly where Alistair sits by the late morning campfire and makes a point of not looking his way when she steps out. Her muscles burn with nervous energy, with fight-or-flight, just as much as it burns with exhaustion. Sleep had been impossible, wracked by constant nightmares that left her more tired than before, so she’d stayed up reading treaties until she heard the first person stir.  And by then, she’d managed to find a perfect excuse to leave.

 

“There's a report of some Tainted wolves and bears on the road between the Mage's Tower and Denerim,” she announces to the camp at large. “I'm going to hunt them down - we've nothing but time before the Landsmeet. Morrigan, would you join me?”

 

The witch, caught in the middle of slipping off to eat breakfast alone, gives a small smile. “I hardly find such an errand important, but I suppose it could be,” and her golden eyes pass meaningfully across the camp in Alistair's direction, “entertaining.”

 

Tabris lets the jab roll off her like water off a duck's back. “Ogrhen?”

 

The dwarfs grunts, sharpening his axe. “I'll pass, Warden. I think the real fun's gonna be back in camp.”

 

Her hope for any sort of tact and understanding among her companions is slowly fading into simmering frustration, and Tabris calls another name with some edge to her tone. “Zevran, then?” and she glances to the assassin.

 

“Ah, I could never refuse you,” he purrs, stretching his arms above his head. “I'll come.”

 

Armor clinks nervously as Alistair shifts from across the fire, but Tabris already knows who the third companion will be and whistles the dog to her side.  ”Let me know when you're ready,” she informs Zevran as she grabs a small roll of bread and retreats to her tent, with the dog in tow.  She can't close the tent flap fast enough to block out a speculative whistle from Ogrhen, and buries herself in paperwork.

 

Time trickles away, lost in the sea of complex, outdated writing that takes her an embarrassingly long time to get through - a side effect of being raised in the Alienage and receiving no formal schooling - as the Mabari naps beside her before Zevran pokes his head inside. “We're ready.”

 

“Coming.” It takes her more effort than usual to get onto her feet, weighted down as she is, but she makes a point of having a brisk step out of camp with her handpicked companions at her heels. Alistair watches her go, and she feels him jolt forward - but in the corner of her eye, Wynne catches his shoulder and sits him back down.  The ache of old scars from last night has morphed into a blade that throbs of guilt, cold and heavy between her ribs, but she can't deal with him right now.  Not yet.

 

Travel is easy and mercifully quiet - the first cool breezes of autumn are starting to roll in, whispering through the gaps in her armor, and the trees are starting to turn color as they head down a bright forest path. But peace doesn't last forever.

 

“So,” Morrigan starts once they're well out of earshot from the camp, and the mere tone of her voice makes Tabris nearly regret bringing her, “it seems that your little dally with the Templar went poorly.”

 

“It's not really your business,” Tabris says, carefully, hand reaching back to finger the edge of her seldom-used bow as her senses alight with the presence of Darkspawn. She likes Morrigan, to nearly everyone's disbelief - the woman is practical, if nothing else, which she appreciates even if they often disagree. And she suspects they will be disagreeing now; especially by the way Zevran slows his pace half a step to back away from them with a nonchalant hum.

 

“Oh, but it is. It's  _all_  of our businesses, unfortunately, since we're in the middle of a Blight.” There's ice on the edges of her tone, but it does nothing to dull the pain of her words, and the metaphorical knife in Tabris's chest wrenches painfully, violently. “And may I remind you that defeating the Archdemon should be a higher priority than your personal life?”

 

Tabris stops dead in the road and switches to her bow, pivoting on her heel and firing an arrow without hardly stopping to aim.  Over Morrigan's shoulder, a massive spider squawks in agony and falls into the path. Zevran freezes, seemingly uncertain if he should grab a weapon or not as human and elf stare each other down, moonlight-yellow boring into midnight-blue.

 

But the witch is right; as much as it hurts to hear, Tabris knows truth when she hears it, knows that she really can't afford to be selfish in her position. So she turns back around, lowering her bow and avoiding Morrigan's eyes. ”I know.  Thank you for reminding me,” she manages, her own voice grating like steel across stone as she buries every emotion she has, pushing them to the soles of her feet and using their energy to walk faster.  Because Morrigan is right, tactless though she can be, and Tabris doesn't want to make excuses - just amends.

 

Morrigan huffs, firing a spell backwards almost casually to finish off the spider. ”Someone had to,” she admits, and it's as close to acceptance as Tabris feels she deserves. Zevran's blades chatter as he likely shrugs and resumes marching in silence.

 

Behind her, the dog whines and licks at Tabris’s gloved hand before she forms it into a fist.

 

* * *

 

 The animals were hunted and dispatched with almost embarrassing ease - then again, she'd known from the start that everyone in camp guessed it was an excuse to blow off some steam. The guilt for being so petty and obvious weighs her down, and as they begin the walk back to camp, Zevran drops back to match her heavy tread.

 

“Want to switch armor for a bit? You look tired.” He taps at the hardened leather he wears, the same style she often sports.  They're similar in size, if not quite in body shape, and the lacing makes their armor unisex anyway. Tabris shakes her head, a drop of sweat flying off with the movement.

 

“No, thank you.”

 

He shrugs and watches her from the corner of his eye as they walk, and she's glad that he’s here. Of everyone in camp, he can probably understand her the most, even if their personalities are nearly opposite. So she knows that she can speak quietly and he'll hear her, because her mother always said the elves were born with large ears so as to hear the voices of nature better.

 

“When you were growing up,” she starts, keeping her eyes on the path ahead to where Morrigan is walking side by side with the Mabari, ”there must have been some customers who were... rougher with the women than others. Who didn't pay, or pay enough for what they wanted.”

 

He takes in a short breath, hesitates before answering. ”Yes, though I remember it more with the Crows. Go on.”

 

“For those who specialised in seduction...” her hands curl into fists, fingernails digging into her palms as she reminds herself that there are no walls around her for miles, ”... if such things occurred, how did they work past those memories? Those scars? Even with new lovers, I mean,” Tabris corrects quickly, aware of her companion's loyalty to her and rather unscrupulous ideals on murder, “ones that don't mean them any harm.”

 

Zevran nods in understanding, tilts his head back and appears to think deeply. “I can't say I ever experienced such things personally,” he says, with an air of choosing his words as carefully as she did, “and I never asked how others might have coped.  In the whorehouse, I was too young to understand the effects of such things, and in the Crows I wasn't always the most popular with my peers.”  Teeth flash in a bitter smile on the edge of her vision. “I would imagine it took time, perhaps, like stepping into a cold river. I believe some of them took lovers of a different sex or race for a while, to get away from the associations. I would offer my services in this regard to you, but...”

 

She shakes her head.

 

“Of course. Sometimes I wish I had met you sooner, you know?” He doesn't elaborate on the subject, glancing sideways to give her a surprisingly tender smile before his face becomes more serious. ”But you do have one luxury that the Crows and the whores do not.”

 

Tabris turns and gives him her full attention for, perhaps, the first time in days - there's no pull of the bond between herself and Alistair, no tether dragging her thoughts to the Darkspawn. There is just the two of them on the edge of the forest, with the sound of the wind whistling through the grass, as he explains.

 

And it's so obvious she could have laughed, but instead her eyes prickle with tears instead; Zevran curses, wiping off her cheeks with exaggerated urgency as Morrigan archly asks Tabris if she should cast an ice spell down his pants instead.  Then she does laugh, bending over in the middle of the path and holding her sides as the knife vanishes, the sudden loss making her dizzy. It burns and it feels as though it bleeds down her sweat-soaked chest but it also feels as though it’s healing, and she leans against the dog the rest of the walk to camp.

 

* * *

 

 When she returns, she makes a point of walking by Alistair. The sense of his presence zeroes Tabris in on his location, just inside Wynne's tent, and she passes deliberately close with a clatter of chainmail and only a trace of a limp. She knows the bond works both ways, knows he knows she’s returned, and heads to her tent to change into clothes.

 

Her skirt whispers when she returns to the campfire, taking a seat nearby Sten, who is cutting up some kind of root and throwing it into the bubbling pot. It's twilight and the sky is beautiful - wine colored clouds edged in bright orange and red near the horizon, and a few familiar stars emerging above the not too distant walls of Denerim - but it feels wasted on her tonight. The previous night’s strain is wearing her thin like cheap cloth, fraying at the edges, and she buries her head in her crossed arms.

 

Soon enough, she feels Alistair’s careful approach; she raises her head just enough to catch his eye and nod in answer to his unspoken request. He keeps a careful space between them as he eases onto the ground, and his voice is just as guarded even though he's not in his plated armor.

 

“How was the side trip?”

 

“Easy,” she admits, unease welling in the pit of her stomach at his presence that takes some of the edge off her appetite. “How is Wynne?”

 

This makes him pause, and she curses under her breath and corrects herself.

 

“It’s not my business. Sorry.”

 

“No, it’s-- it’s all right,” he assures softly. “She’s good. Just, um… needed her help with some healing.”

 

Tabris peers up at him from her crossed arms to see him thumb his jawline, where a trio of faint scratches are still visible. Empathy sears similar lines across her heart. “... I’m sorry.”

 

He attempts a laugh that dies on his tongue, and he presses on anyway. “I’ve seen what you can do in combat. You could have done much worse, if you’d wanted to.” His voice drops to barely a murmur, even though most of the camp is watching Leliana and Ogrhen bicker. “And I don’t think you really wanted to, so…”

 

“I’m sorry for more than the cuts,” she elaborates just as softly, letting her eyes flutter closed. “Can we talk after dinner? Alone?”

 

“You-- of course,” Alistair replies, cutting off the incredulous note before it rang out too loudly. She hears him take in a short breath and expects him to speak; but instead, after a pause, she feels his fingertips on her shoulder blade.

 

Her mind flickers back to Vaughan and his men for only a moment, like a sudden chill; Tabris gathers up the emotions in the back of her throat, feeling them choke for only a moment before she exhales in a deep sigh and leans trustingly into his touch. Alistair mimics her habit and runs his fingertips down her spine, to the middle of her back, and then up to the nape of her neck. He traces patterns she’s too tired to track in the tense muscles of her shoulders, spells words she doesn’t know along her vertebrae, and only stops when the food is ready.

 

They eat in moderate silence, a careful truce, and observe the rest of camp rather than add their own voices to the banter. Later Tabris will learn that Leliana compared the two of them to the perpetually stoic Sten, but for now she is consumed with exhaustion. The food is bland enough to eat very quickly, and surprisingly filling - she thanks Sten for the meal, a gesture he returns with a nod of his head that gives her a flicker of pride at how far they’ve come as companions - and returns to her tent.

 

Alistair doesn’t wait too long in following her this time - he raps on the canvas, absurdly, and she pulls apart the flaps to admit him. There’s a different kind of tension between them now, a different kind of animal instinct, but Zevran’s whispered advantage comes to her mind and she trusts he will not hurt her again.

 

“I need to tell you something,” she begins. “Why… I reacted why I did last night.”

 

His jaw tightens, probably from the force of keeping his mouth shut and she wonders if Wynne didn’t try to heal more than his face. Tabris takes in a bracing inhale and lets her eyes drop to the space between their knees, a narrow band of neutral ground. The problem with being so good at avoiding conflict, at talking people into doing what she wants them to do and hiding her own feelings, is that it makes being honest very difficult.

 

“How much did Duncan tell you about me when I arrived?”

 

Alistair’s fingers tense, a pained reflex, before he smoothes them nervously against his pants. “I don’t remember much. Just that he had you pardoned with the Warden’s right of conscription.”

 

“He did. And I was guilty of murdering an Arl’s son and most of his guards.” For her credit, she keeps her voice steady. “I told you I had a fiance, right? An arranged marriage?”

 

“You did,” he admits, wary but trusting. Curious.

 

“The day Duncan came to visit was supposed to be a joint wedding. Between myself and Nelaros - my fiance - and between my cousin and his. But the arl’s son showed up and kidnapped half the wedding party. You can guess which part,” she adds, trying to take the edge off, glancing to the side to the piles of treaties and requests and tokens of gratitude. How far she’s come from that day. How much she’s changed, and yet stayed the same. “And you can guess why.”

 

She dares to look at his hands, which are slowly gripping the bottom hem of his shirt.

 

“I didn’t have it so bad. Not as bad as-- others,” she deflects, she’d promised Shianni and she would take that secret to the grave, “but they still-- One of them pinned me to the wall, the other-- it wasn’t that bad.” Tabris wipes the back of her hand across her eyes, which sting bitterly. “The Blight has been a good distraction, in some ways. But in others, it’s been… difficult. I thought-- I thought I was all right, though, I thought--” thought she’d fixed herself, bound herself up tight in all these bonds and tethers that tie to everyone around her and built up her armor, “-- I’m sorry. I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was.”

 

Tabris is done with crying, so she just presses her lips in a thin line and dares to look up at Alistair - his gaze is aimed at the floor, golden brown eyes glimmering, and she presses her knees together, pulls them closer to her body. Eventually he looks up, meeting her gaze, and gives her a somewhat watery smile.

 

“Of course  _you_  would be sorry for something like that,” he remarks at last. “Now I’m glad I’m still alive. By the Maker,” and his voice shifts into something more earnest, serious, “I… I had no idea.”

 

“I didn’t want you to.”

 

“I can see that.” Alistair heaves an exhausted sigh and offers up his hand, palm up. She takes it, wrapping her fingers around his palm and squeezing. It’s a chaste, comforting gesture,and it seems to ground him as much as it does her.

 

When he speaks again, it’s with sure and gentle words. “You’re still… still the strongest person I’ve ever met, by miles. The smartest, too. So if this is one thing you’re not fearless in, then… I don’t think that’s a horrible thing. You don’t have to be everything all by yourself. That’s why we’re here.”

 

It hurts, the sudden crack in her composure and the emotional armor she still tries to wear - but it’s followed up with such a rush of relief she lets it splinter at the edges, sentiment spilling through as she tightens her grip around his hand.

 

“But you, specifically,” she says at last, meeting his gaze and letting her heart shine out, unfettered and unconcealed, “I can't offer you my body right now, and I won’t promise that I ever will.” They may not live long to get that far; the thought brushes the back of her neck like the trail of one of Morrigan’s spells, cold and inexorable. “Knowing that, do you still… Do you still want to be with me, as little as it may be?”

 

His expression blanks with surprise, then his hand squeezes back. “Tabris, if I may confess something?” The smile that flickers across his face is boyish in a way that wipes away months of war and worry. “There’s a chance I’ve loved you since you wore chainmail everywhere and still managed to climb up an Ogre’s back in Ostagar.”

 

The memory, unexpectedly, brings up a bubble of laughter. “I almost fell backwards and cracked my head open,” she confesses.

 

“Is that so?” There’s a teasing lilt to his voice, a lift to one eyebrow. “Because from my angle, a little elf woman with the sharpest eyes I had ever seen ran up that monster as if the weight of her armor was nothing and saved my life. Everything else you’ve done, or could do, is just… adding to that. I don’t need anything more from you, especially not if it hurts you. So let me ask in return.”

 

Alistair wraps his other hand around hers. “Is there anything,” he asks, gentle and careful and deliberate, “that I can do for you?”

 

Tabris considers this for a moment - runs over it all in her head, still soaking in the warmth of his hands and his eyes and his presence. Then she nods.

 

“Sleep with me. Not sex, just… sleep with me, tonight?”

 

“Oh?” Alistair’s eyes widen with surprise. “No sworn oaths to help you avenge your honor?”

 

“Already did it,” she admits, with less regret than she feels a Warden should have at killing humans, “but if you’re offering, perhaps when you’re king you can--”

 

“Wow, look at the sun, must be time for bed.” He yawns theatrically. “Sitting around in camp was exhausting.”

 

As she watches the blush spread down his cheeks to his ears, staining his shoulders red as he takes off his shirt, she knows Zevran was right. But explaining that, she senses, might ruin the mood, so she lets her hair down out of the tight braided buns and watches Alistair study her.

 

“May I?” he asks hesitantly, reaching out for the tie of one braid. Tabris is tempted to refuse, as she keeps her hair in braids to sleep so it doesn’t tangle, but she relents with a small shrug and a poorly hidden smile.

 

Alistair runs his fingers through the long, scarlet locks, wrapping them gently around his digits and combing them into loose waves. And she knows that, no matter what the rest of their companions might think, she made the right choice to trust him with her heart. It’s fragile, and sharp at the edges from being broken one too many times by the cruelty of the world, but it still beats strong in her chest as she kisses him goodnight.

 

* * *

 

 When she awakens, she doesn't remember the nightmares; she doesn't awaken still shivering of cold stone against her bare back, doesn't jolt out of visions of Soris coming too late and her own skin swollen with disease and child. If she dreams of such dark things at all, they are gone by the time she opens her eyes.

 

Alistair's hand is resting on her waist, warm and sure through her clothing - Tabris rests her palm on top of it and presses her smaller, delicate fingers into the spaces between his, listening to his deep and even breathing. There is only a faint, steady, rosy light seeping through the canvas walls of her tent, and the air is still cool. It must be before dawn.

 

She tries to roll onto her stomach but it stopped dead by the weight of something on her hair. Rolling onto her back takes some maneuvering, and Alistair's hand slides across her stomach to rest on her opposite hip, but she gets her answer. Alistair is dead asleep, drooling ever so slightly on the hair she'd taken out of her braids; the hair that she grew out in memory of her mother, slaughtered by humans.

 

Tabris rolls back onto her side and scoots backwards ever so slightly, fitting the curve of her body against his, and watches the sun rise through the walls of her tent.

 

It's not so bad, after all.

 

 

 


End file.
